Thread: Method of Moments

Hey,
just started an undergrad Stats course and im having trouble understanding the Method of Moments theorem... Ive looked everywhere and whilst there are definitions on wikipedia etc, I find them tough to completely comprehend.

Any insight would be massively appreciated. Also, if anyone knows a decent statistics website that explains these things i would be grateful.

Anyway here is the question:
"Let X1 , . . . , Xn be a random sample from a Geom (θ) distribution, where θ is a single unknown
parameter. State the value of E(X ; θ) and hence find the method of moments estimator of the
unknown parameter θ."

Now i know that E( X;theta) is 1/theta but i dont know where to go from there....

Originally Posted by sebjory

Hey,
just started an undergrad Stats course and im having trouble understanding the Method of Moments theorem... Ive looked everywhere and whilst there are definitions on wikipedia etc, I find them tough to completely comprehend.

Any insight would be massively appreciated. Also, if anyone knows a decent statistics website that explains these things i would be grateful.

Anyway here is the question:
"Let X1 , . . . , Xn be a random sample from a Geom (θ) distribution, where θ is a single unknown
parameter. State the value of E(X ; θ) and hence find the method of moments estimator of the
unknown parameter θ."

Now i know that E( X;theta) is 1/theta but i dont know where to go from there....

The Method of Moments says that the mean of the n observations is assumed to be a reasonable estimate for the mean of X.